1. Technical Field
The claimed subject matter relates generally to computer expansion devices and, more specifically, to a method to facilitate the installation or swapping of an expansion card in a computing system
2. Description of the Related Art
The last several decades have witnessed incredible progress in the development of systems and procedures for the modularization of computer devices. The original computers were large, stand-alone machines in which every associated peripheral device, such as a printer or a communication device, had to be specifically wired to the computing system and the computing system had to be specifically programmed to utilize the device. Eventually, methods were developed to enable peripheral devices to be installed, swapped and uninstalled in a more modular fashion. In addition, devices were developed in the form of expansion cards that plug directly into a computing system. Most personal computer users are familiar with the procedure for adding or changing a printer and/or expansion cards.
Today, most computer systems have physical slots in which certain devices such as memory controllers and network communication devices, i.e. “expansion cards” or simply “cards,” can be installed into the hardware. For example, the Peripheral Component Interconnect Standard (PCI) includes specifications for a planar device, i.e. “planar” or “card carrier,” that is incorporated into a motherboard and into which expansion cards may be inserted. Expansion cards include, but are not limited to, such devices as network cards, sound cards, video cards, modems, extra ports and disk controllers. Examples of computer bus architectures employed to provide connectivity among expansion cards and the computing system include PCIe, PCI-X, SATA, ISA and SAS.
Expansion cards are frequently installed into positions in the planar, i.e. “slots,” when the system is powered down. However, some current systems enable a user to add, remove or change devices while the system is powered and booted to a hypervisor. In this type of system, a subset of the installed hardware assigned to a virtual computing system, i.e. “partition,” rather than the entire computing system may be activated and deactivated without turning the system off and on.
One issue that arises when a user installs a new card in this manner is that a hardware management console (HMC) cannot detect configuration changes at the slot level until a partition containing the slot is activated, or power is supplied. For example, when a user who is selecting slots to include in a new partition configures the hardware and software for the new partition, the user uses the HMC to create the new partition. If the user is, for example, replacing a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) device with an Ethernet adapter, the user cannot see the Ethernet adapter when selecting input/output (I/O) for the partition because the HMC still displays the SCSI adapter as installed in the position that now contains the Ethernet adapter. The user must double check to make sure that the location code for the unexpected SCSI adapter actually matches the slot in which the Ethernet adapter is actually installed. This checking becomes even more problematic if the partition creation step is performed remotely after the hardware is installed. In other words, to ensure that no incorrect devices are installed in the system must be manually checked by a person local to the system.